ORCID Profile
0000-0002-2006-869X
Current Organisation
Queensland University of Technology
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Research Topics
In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Top 5 Research Topics
ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)
Public Health and Health Services | Family Care | Mental Health | Social And Community Psychology | Information Systems | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Information and Knowledge Systems | Studies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Society | Policy and Administration | Public Health and Health Services not elsewhere classified | Social And Cultural Geography | Justice And Legal Studies Not Elsewhere Classified | Social Policy And Planning
ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)
Civics and citizenship | Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Development and Welfare | Health and Support Services not elsewhere classified | Child health | Health related to specific ethnic groups | Youth/child development and welfare | Migrant development and welfare | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health - Determinants of Health | Mental health | Women's Health | Health Related to Specific Ethnic Groups |
Related Links
Publications
Unmasking depression: Challenging structural oppression whilst recognising individual agency
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 05-2020
Abstract: Women living in rural Australia who are labelled as depressed, by either themselves or professionals, contend with spatial injustices of limited service provision that converge with the dominant constructions of mental health and knowledge authorisation. Informed by a feminist social constructionist standpoint, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 women living in rural New South Wales in Australia. This paper explores how rural women navigate experiences labelled as depression. The women’s stories conveyed an overwhelming sense of loss, abuse and betrayal, and the pathologisation of their experiences of structural violence and oppression is of significant concern. Yet, the women also showed agency by using to their best benefit multiple and often ergent explanations for their experiences of depression. While many accepted the diagnosis of their symptoms, most resisted a sole pathological cause and actively created in idually meaningful narratives of their depression experiences. The language of ‘depression’ provided a passport for some, allowing access to formal supports that would have otherwise been unavailable or highly stigmatised. Rurality and the associated structural disadvantage, particularly in regard to service provision, was only marginally present in the women’s stories. The alternative narratives of healing uncovered challenge the centrality of formal service delivery to the wellbeing of a community. Further, while the pathologisation of structural oppression must be resisted, the women’s stories demonstrate the importance of not invisibilising the agency they demonstrate in this difficult and contested space.
Smoking behaviour among Indigenous secondary school students in North Queensland
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-2004
Social Context Matters: Predictors of Quality of Life among Recently Arrived Refugee Women-at-Risk Living in Australia
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-03-2020
'Her cry is my cry': Resettlement experiences of refugee women at risk recently resettled in Australia
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.PUHE.2018.03.010
Abstract: Refugee women entering resettlement countries on woman-at-risk visas represent a particularly vulnerable population. While their specific gender-based resettlement will likely differ from the general refugee population, little is known about their experiences of early resettlement, with which to inform resettlement policy and practice. This research aimed to explore lived experiences of recently resettled refugee women at risk in Australia. Qualitative research used focus groups and a framework approach to identify and explicate common themes in participants' experience. Two focus groups with a purposive s le of African and Afghan refugee women at risk (N = 10), aged 22-53 years, were conducted in South East Queensland, Australia (October 2016), recruited with the assistance of a local resettlement service. Discussions were audiotaped, transcribed, and themes explicated. Six superordinate themes emerged: (1) sentiment of gratitude (2) sense of loneliness and disconnection (3) feeling incapable (4) experiencing distress and help-seeking (5) experiencing financial hardship and (6) anticipating the future. Findings indicate that resettlement policy, programs, and practice that explicitly target the needs of women-at-risk refugees are warranted, including a longer period of active service provision with specific attention to strategies that address the women's social connection, self-efficacy, emotional well-being, and financial hardships.
The Basketball Boys: young men from refugee backgrounds and the symbolic value of swagger in an Australian state high school
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 16-06-2021
We don't tell people what to do: ethical practice and Indigenous health promotion
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 25-11-2015
DOI: 10.1071/HE15048
Field Placement and the Impact of Financial Stress on Social Work and Human Service Students
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 07-06-2016
Everyday resilience: Narratives of single refugee women with children
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 11-06-2013
Abstract: This article offers a critical exploration of the concept of resilience, which is largely conceptualized in the literature as an extraordinary atypical personal ability to revert or ‘bounce back’ to a point of equilibrium despite significant adversity. While resilience has been explored in a range of contexts, there is little recognition of resilience as a social process arising from mundane practices of everyday life and situated in person-environment interactions. Based on an ethnographic study among single refugee women with children in Brisbane, Australia, the women’s stories on navigating everyday tensions and opportunities revealed how resilience was a process operating inter-subjectively in the social spaces connecting them to their environment. Far beyond the simplistic binaries of resilience versus non-resilient, we concern ourselves here with the everyday processual, person-environment nature of the concept. We argue that more attention should be paid to day-to-day pathways through which resilience outcomes are achieved, and that this has important implications for refugee mental health practice frameworks.
Social capital meets identity - Aboriginality in an urban setting
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 12-2006
Abstract: This article reports on a qualitative study of social capital within an urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander context. Using data generated from 100 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants in focus group discussions and in-depth interviews collected by Aboriginal community development workers, this article describes two worlds of social capital available to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The primary source of bonding social capital comes from family and wider Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community connections. In the context of an oppressive history and experiences of ongoing racism and discrimination, a second world of bridging social capital remains elusive to many Indigenous Australians. Our findings suggest that to understand the tensions between the two social capitals requires an engagement with the complexities of identity. We argue that it is vital to explore the texture of social capital, rather than just measure its volume.
'It had to be my choice' Indigenous smoking cessation and negotiations of risk, resistance and resilience
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-2012
Healthy imaginations: A social history of the epidemiology of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2001
DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2001.9966187
Abstract: It is difficult to imagine Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health without the powerful descriptors of epidemiology. The statistical imagery of numerical tables, pie charts, and bar graphs have become a key element in the public presentation of Indigenous public health issues. Such quantitative measurements of health draw on the authority of neutral, objective science and are thus rarely questioned in terms of their social meaning. This paper traces the history of this imagery through the 20th century, providing a social account of epidemiological description. Historical notions such as social Darwinism, assimilation, and dangerous other are all seen to be woven into the epidemiological text. The enormous rise in the epidemiological description of Indigenous health problems in recent years needs to be analyzed as a social phenomenon and, in particular, as an aspect of emerging forms of governmentality. Finally, it is argued that such analyses are needed in order to promote an anthropology of epidemiology and to avoid limiting medical anthropology to applications within epidemiology.
Folk knowledge about dengue mosquitoes and contributions of health belief model in dengue control promotion in Northeast Thailand
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2006
DOI: 10.1016/J.ACTATROPICA.2006.05.012
Abstract: The health belief model (HBM) has been adopted as the principal theory for health education and communication for dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) prevention and control in Thailand. The HBM focuses on persuading people to acknowledge their vulnerability and susceptibility to DHF, and the benefits of undertaking dengue larval control in household water containers. This study was undertaken in Khon Kaen province to investigate folk knowledge and beliefs about dengue mosquitoes and larval control c aigns and relating these to the theoretical components of HBM. Findings from this study indicate that health education messages can raise awareness during an outbreak but do not ensure sustained larval control practices. Several barriers are identified, including insufficient control agents, inadequate knowledge of control methods, and incompatibility of control practices with people's beliefs. The barriers prevail over the benefits of recommended larval control practices. In developing health education messages, consideration should go beyond the HBM and focus on control methods that are compatible with the socio-cultural environment in which control practices are being encouraged.
The Multidimensional Loss Scale
Publisher: Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Date: 04-2012
Recently resettled refugee women-at-risk in Australia evidence high levels of psychiatric symptoms: individual, trauma and post-migration factors predict outcomes
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 18-09-2018
Negotiating disability and colonisation: The lived experience of Indigenous Australians with a disability
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-12-2014
A Bourdieusian analysis exploring the meaning of sport for young women from refugee backgrounds in an Australian state high school
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 07-01-2021
A longitudinal study of mental health in refugees from Burma: The impact of therapeutic interventions
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 19-03-2012
Abstract: The present study seeks to examine the impact of therapeutic interventions for people from refugee backgrounds within a naturalistic setting. Sixty-two refugees from Burma were assessed soon after arriving in Australia. All participants received standard interventions provided by a resettlement organisation which included therapeutic interventions, assessment, social assistance, and referrals where appropriate. At the completion of service provision a follow-up assessment was conducted. Over the course of the intervention, participants experienced a significant decrease in symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and somatisation. Pre-intervention symptoms predicted symptoms post-intervention for post-traumatic stress, anxiety and somatisation. Post-migration living difficulties, the number of traumas experienced, and the number of contacts with the service agency were unrelated to all mental health outcomes. In the first Australian study of its kind, reductions in mental health symptoms post-intervention were significantly linked to pre-intervention symptomatology and the number of therapy sessions predicted post-intervention symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Future studies need to include larger s les and control groups to verify findings.
Well‐Being of Refugees from Burma: A Salutogenic Perspective
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 28-01-2013
DOI: 10.1111/IMIG.12051
“I've always lived in a place with gardens”: Residents' homemaking experiences in Australian aged-care gardens
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2020
Distress, Coping, and Posttraumatic Growth in Refugees From Burma
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-07-2014
Beyond the pipeline: a critique of the discourse surrounding the development of an Indigenous primary healthcare workforce in Australia
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing
Date: 2019
DOI: 10.1071/PY19044
Abstract: A central strategy in addressing health disparities experienced by Indigenous people has been based on a concern with workforce improvement. In this paper, the Indigenous Australian healthcare workforce literature since 1977 is reviewed and its scope of concern, as being often limited to questions of ‘supply’, is critiqued. The pipeline metaphor, whether used explicitly or implied, regularly focuses attention on closing the gap on Indigenous representation within the health workforce. The exception though is the discourse concerning Indigenous Health Workers (IHWs), where questions concerning the legitimacy of the role continue to abound within a workforce hierarchy where community knowledge, though shown to be crucial to culturally safe health service provision, is trumped by the other health professions whose knowledges and legitimacy are not in question. This contrast exemplifies the need to examine the working of power not just ‘supply’. The pipeline metaphor is disrupted with concerns about a range of other ‘gaps’ – gaps in the recognition of Indigenous knowledges, in organisational structures, in governance and in self-awareness by the health professions of their whiteness. As the health system continues to measure workforce development in terms of pipeline capacity, our study questions what happens beyond the pipeline.
Toward Cultural Epidemiology: Beyond Epistemological Hegemony
Publisher: Elsevier
Date: 2013
‘Like the boy who cried wolf’: The tensions of hospitality and role of deconstruction in dyadic discursive therapy interactions with children and their caregivers
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 29-09-2022
DOI: 10.1177/14733250221123332
Abstract: There’s a particular ‘common sense’ required of the contemporary neoliberal subject to ‘self-regulate, self-fashion, and self-produce’ ( Houghton, 2019 : 618). Crucially, this work on the self happens within a political context of a dominant discourse which valorises the resilient, self-regulating and enterprising in idual. It is somewhat unsurprising then, that children who struggle to contain intense emotions are referred to therapy. Their experience of therapy, however, ought to then be examined within this broader socio-political context. This article examines the power dynamics of a therapeutic encounter with a child ostensibly in need of greater emotional self-regulation. To investigate how children are positioned in therapy, therapy transcripts are investigated, drawing on Derrida’s concepts of hospitality and deconstruction. Utilising a critical discourse analysis of therapy transcripts, we explored the tensions in hosting children in therapy interactions from a counselling session with a 9-year-old girl, Emily, along with her female caregiver, Kate, and her social worker, in the role of therapist. Our Foucauldian inspired power analysis revealed these tensions at work in the therapeutic encounter. We show how Emily enacted her own deconstruction of the story ‘The boy who cried wolf’, opening the door to a relational understanding of emotional regulation. The findings highlight the need for social workers to engage in reflexive practice to be able to listen to children without transforming their insights into opportunities to reinforce dominant narratives.
‘Better than a pill’: digital storytelling as a narrative process for refugee women
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 22-05-2019
Beyond the accolades : a postcolonial critique of the foundations of the Ottawa Charter
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 06-2013
Abstract: The Ottawa Charter is undeniably of pivotal importance in the history of ideas associated with the establishment of health promotion. There is much to applaud in a charter which responds to the need to take action on the social and economic determinants of health and which seeks to empower communities to be at the centre of this. Such accolades tend to position the Ottawa Charter as ‘beyond critique’ a taken-for-granted ‘given’ in the history of health promotion. In contrast, we argue it is imperative to critically reflect on its ‘manufacture’ and assess the possibility that certain voices have been privileged, and others marginalized. This paper re-examines the 1986 Ottawa Conference including its background papers from a postcolonial standpoint. We use critical discourse analysis as a tool to identify the enactment of power within the production of the Ottawa health promotion discourse. This exercise draws attention to both the power to ensure the dominant presence of privileged voices at the conference as well as the discursive strategies deployed to ‘naturalize’ the social order of inequality. Our analysis shows that the discourse informing the development of the Ottawa Charter strongly reflected Western/colonizer centric worldviews, and actively silenced the possibility of countervailing Indigenous and developing country voices. The Ottawa Charter espouses principles of participation, empowerment and social justice. We question then whether the genesis of the Ottawa Charter lives up to its own principles of practice. We conclude that reflexive practice is crucial to health promotion, which ought to include a preparedness for health promotion to more critically acknowledge its own history. (Global Health Promotion, 2013 20(2): 22–29)
Deadly Choices empowering Indigenous Australians through social networking sites
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 05-04-2018
Abstract: The potential for health promotion through social networking sites (SNSs) is widely recognized. However, while health promotion prides itself in focusing on the social determinants of health, its partiality for persuading in iduals to comply with health behaviours dominates the way health promotion utilizes SNSs. This paper contributes to an understanding of collaborative ways SNSs can work for health promotion agendas of self-determination and empowerment in an Indigenous Australia context. An ethnographic study was undertaken with Deadly Choices, an Indigenous-led health promotion initiative. The study involved participant observation of interactions on Deadly Choices SNSs between Deadly Choices and its online community members. Deadly Choices provides an ex le of SNSs providing a powerful tool to create a safe, inclusive and positive space for Indigenous people and communities to profile their healthy choices, according to Indigenous notions of health and identity. The study found five principles that underpin Deadly Choices' use of SNSs for health promotion. These are: create a dialogue build community online and offline incentivise healthy online engagement celebrate Indigenous identity and culture and prioritize partnerships. Deadly Choices SNSs empowers Indigenous people and communities to be health promoters themselves, which represents a power shift from health promotion practitioner to Indigenous people and communities and more broadly, an enactment of Indigenous self-determination on SNSs. Mainstream health promotion can learn from Indigenous health promotion practice regarding the use of SNSs for health promotion agendas.
Psychometric properties of the multidimensional loss scale with refugee women-at-risk recently arrived in Australia
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 21-05-2019
DOI: 10.1007/S10903-018-0750-5
Abstract: Refugee women-at-risk represent a distinct and vulnerable refugee population. We investigated the psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Loss Scale (MLS) with 104 women-at-risk, recently-arrived in Australia. Cross-sectional survey included: the MLS (indexing loss events and loss distress) Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (Indexing Trauma Events and Trauma Symptoms), and Hopkins Symptom Checklist-37 (indexing anxiety, depression, and somatization symptoms). Exploratory factor analyses of MLS loss distress revealed a six-factor model (loss of symbolic self loss of home loss of interdependence loss of past aspirations interpersonal loss, and loss of intrapersonal integrity). Cronbach alphas indicated satisfactory internal consistency for loss events (0.83) and distress (0.88). Correlations supported convergent validity of loss distress with trauma symptoms (r = 0.41) and ergent validity with anxiety (r = 0.09), Depression (r = 0.29), and somatic (r = 0.24) symptoms. Findings support MLS use in assessment of loss and associated distress with refugee women-at-risk.
Transnationalism and the Karen wrist-tying ceremony: An ethnographic account of Karen settlement practice in Brisbane
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-02-2016
DOI: 10.1111/TAJA.12176
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research and the conduct of longitudinal studies: Issues for debate
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2003
DOI: 10.1111/J.1467-842X.2003.TB00612.X
Abstract: The National Health and Medical Research Council, Research Agenda Working Group (RAWG), and the literature on Indigenous health have identified the need to fill gaps in descriptive data on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and noted both the lack of research with urban populations and the need for longitudinal studies. This paper presents some of the broad ethical and methodological challenges associated with longitudinal research in Indigenous health and focuses particularly on national studies and studies in urban areas. Our goal is to advance debate in the public health arena about the application of ethical guidelines and the conduct of longitudinal studies in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We encourage others to offer their experiences in this field.
Openness and reciprocity: Indigenous community requirements for hosting university students
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 17-02-2019
Inside the black box of food safety: A qualitative study of 'non-compliance' among food businesses
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 29-10-2016
DOI: 10.1071/HE15013
“Milbulgali Bagili”: A systematic scoping review of the history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advocacy 1940‐1970
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-08-2021
DOI: 10.1002/HPJA.386
Abstract: Health promotion, the process of enabling people to increase control over their health, implies advocacy and empowerment on behalf of others. This does not account for the phenomena whereby Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have advocated to strengthen the determinants of their own and their communities' health. This paper provides a systematic scoping review of the published literature that documents Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advocacy to improve community empowerment during the time 1940‐1970. The objectives of the review were to establish: 1. The extent to which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advocacy has been documented 2. The extent to which the literature is written from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective 3. The extent to which local community‐level advocacy has been documented and 4. How advocacy occurred. The Informit database was systematically searched, publications selected against inclusion criteria, and themes synthesised to map key concepts, types of evidence and gaps in research. Based on this systematic search, 30 papers were found. The four key themes identified were: in idual advocates, black organisations, international solidarity and black and white people working together. Despite the many gaps in the literature, there is documented evidence of considerable outcomes from advocacy. The concept of advocacy and indeed, health promotion itself, may need to be decolonised, and that the concept of “everyday resistance” may more accurately encompass the erse repertoire of actions which took place between agents of resistance and agents of dominant power.
Indigenous academics teaching Indigenous health: ‘it’s part of who we are, our spirit, our soul, our knowledge… that goes into our teaching’
Publisher: Bond University
Date: 25-11-2021
DOI: 10.53300/001C.30070
Abstract: Aim: Explore the experiences of Indigenous academics teaching Indigenous peoples’ history, health and culture in Australian Bachelor of Nursing programs. Methodology: Theoretical framework comprises of Indigenous methodologies including Indigenous women’s standpoint theory and Indigenist research principles. Methods: One-on-one research yarns that were voice-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed through an assemblage approach. Findings: Participants of this study shared their doubts about the legitimacy afforded to them and Indigenous health curriculum by some of their colleagues and their school and faculty leaders. They highlighted that strategic and careful disruption of the status quo is a quality imperative. Participants identified the paradox of revisiting personal trauma as pedagogy and curriculum, suggesting a lack of preparedness of their schools to adequately support them. Relational engagement with other Indigenous peoples was emphasised, however, the implicit expectation for them to capitalise on personal relationships involved risking their reputation for their schools, who seemingly demand their resourcefulness as substitute for resources. Conclusion: Indigenous academics care for quality learning and teaching of Indigenous peoples’ history, health, and culture. This care extends to nursing students, fellow academics, as well as school and faculty leadership, despite the lack of care afforded to them. Realising relational and reciprocal care, through providing appropriate support and resources, would benefit them and their academic practice.
Contributions of Loss Events to Loss Distress and Trauma Symptoms in Recently Resettled Refugee Women at Risk
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 22-02-2017
Unpacking the Micro-Macro Nexus: Narratives of Suffering and Hope among Refugees from Burma Recently Settled in Australia
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 27-08-2012
DOI: 10.1093/JRS/FES025
How young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds experience mental health: some insights for mental health nurses.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 21-08-2003
DOI: 10.1046/J.1440-0979.2003.00289.X
Abstract: This article reports on part of a study that looked at the mental health of culturally and linguistically erse (CALD) young people. The research sought to learn from CALD young people, carers, and service providers experiences relevant to the mental health of this group of young people. The ultimate goal was to gain insights that would inform government policy, service providers, ethnic communities and most importantly the young people themselves. To this end, qualitative interviews were undertaken with 123 CALD young people, 41 carers and 14 mental health service providers in Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia. Only one aspect of the study will be dealt with here, namely the views of the young CALD participants, which included risk factors, coping strategies and recommendations about how they could be supported in their struggle to maintain mental health. One of the most important findings of the study relates to the resilience of these young people and an insight into the strategies that they used to cope. The efforts of these young people to assist us in our attempts to understand their situation deserve to be rewarded by improvements in the care that we provide. To this end this article sets out to inform mental health nurses of the results of the study so that they will be in a position to better understand the needs and strengths of their CALD clients and be in a better position to work effectively with them.
A contributing life: Living a contributing life as a person, an artist and an artist with a mental illness
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 29-07-2015
Review of Australian Health Related Social Work Research 1990-2009
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-2013
YOUNG REFUGEES TALK ABOUT WELL‐BEING: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF REFUGEE YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH FROM THREE STATES
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 05-2003
Digital storytelling as a social work tool: Learning from ethnographic research with women from refugee backgrounds
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 19-11-2015
DOI: 10.1093/BJSW/BCT184
Mental Health of Newly Arrived Burmese Refugees in Australia: Contributions of Pre-Migration and Post-Migration Experience
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 04-2011
DOI: 10.3109/00048674.2010.543412
Abstract: Objective: This study documents the mental health status of people from Burmese refugee backgrounds recently arrived in Australia, then examines the contributions of gender, pre-migration and post-migration factors in predicting mental health. Method: Structured interviews, including a demographic questionnaire, the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, the Post-migration Living Difficulties Checklist and Hopkins Symptom Checklist assessed pre-migration trauma, post-migration living difficulties, depression, anxiety, somatization and traumatization symptoms in a s le of 70 adults across five Burmese ethnic groups. Results: Substantial proportions of participants reported psychological distress in symptomatic ranges including: post-traumatic stress disorder (9%), anxiety (20%) and depression (36%), as well as significant symptoms of somatization (37%). Participants reported multiple and severe pre-migration traumas. Post-migration living difficulties of greatest concern included communication problems and worry about family not in Australia. Gender did not predict mental health. Level of exposure to traumatic events and post-migration living difficulties each made unique and relatively equal contributions to traumatization symptoms. Post-migration living difficulties made unique contributions to depression, anxiety and somatization symptoms. Conclusions: While exposure to traumatic events impacted on participants’ mental well-being, post-migration living difficulties had greater salience in predicting mental health outcomes of people from Burmese refugee backgrounds. Reported rates of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms were consistent with a large review of adults across seven western countries. High levels of somatization point to a nuanced expression of distress. Findings have implications for service provision in terms of implementing appropriate interventions to effectively meet the needs of this newly arrived group in Australia.
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Related Funding Activities
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Funder: Australian Research Council
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Amount: $1,776,000.00
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View Funded ActivitySpecial Research Initiatives - Grant ID: SR0354489
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View Funded ActivityLinkage Projects - Grant ID: LP140100609
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